Think if you wake up like that tomorrow.
They get up and can not talk to their family or friends.
This happened to Vader, a 35-year civil engineer,
married, with two children.
A stroke left him locked inside his body.
Why do I say locked up? Because he knows exactly what happens to him,
He knows perfectly what is happening around him,
and he knows perfectly well that he can only move his right eye.
I had the chance to talk to Vader.
But when I say talk,
it’s with that blackboard with hand drawn letters
where I point out letter by letter,
waiting for him to move his right eye to tell me
that is the letter you need.
After almost 20 minutes of chatting with him,
He could tell me two things:
to turn it, because his back hurt
and that he would close the window because the sun was hitting him in the face.
Think of someone who spends 24 hours in a bed,
every minute, every second of interaction with another person,
It is invaluable.
And that communication was not.
After almost an hour of chatting with him, of exchanging words,
we manage to talk about his emotions, his mood,
how he feels.
They will wonder why I was talking to Vader.
To answer that question I have to go back a little bit.
When I was in my career studying biomedical engineering,
they taught me that there are many people who are born without being able to talk,
or that from one day to the next, like Vader, they lose the ability to do so.
That 3 out of every 1000 people in the world
They are born with cerebral palsy,
that 1 in 300 has autism,
and that there is a stroke every four minutes in Argentina.
But at that moment those data were only numbers to remember,
it was much later when my brother consulted me about solutions for people
that can not talk.
It was there when all those tools,
all these numbers,
they came back to my mind.
And one more thing came back to my mind.
I remembered that that day sitting in that classroom I felt that what I had
it was not enough.
Why do I say it was not enough?
Because today we can see the world from our bed,
we can talk to anyone
with just pressing two buttons on the phone
and today that same phone tells me that if I do not leave now,
I’m going to be late for my next meeting because there’s a lot of traffic.
I’m Hector Costa, creator of OTTAA Project,
a communication system for people with disabilities,
that uses images,
and all the environment information
to help people communicate easier
and with greater precision.
We created this system with my brother to try on our grandmother.
Today OTTA Project has more than 1100 users in 16 countries.
In the last 30 days, around 30,000 phrases have been created.
But I’m here to tell you about these images.
What are these images?
These images represent actions, objects, feelings.
They are called pictograms,
it’s a system, it’s a communication code
that people know
and they use it to put sentences together,
and exchange them with other people.
When we learn to speak, we associate
an object, a feeling or a need, a desire
to a sound, that’s why when we’re kids, we get mad at the puree dish
because no, it’s our way of telling the world that today we do not want to eat mashed
The same happens with the images,
these images are associated with objects, feelings, desires,
but there is a whole process to get there
to the pictograms, it’s an abstraction process where first
you start exchanging objects,
real objects,
then images, photos, of what we want, feel or need
to then get to the pictograms.
When someone loses the ability to speak it becomes much more difficult
express precisely what you need, what you feel, what you want.
So, well for everyone here to understand a bit this,
I ask you to do an exercise:
that they take their seats and, without opening their mouths they tell who they have
next they are fine, they feel good
that nothing is happening to them today, please try, everyone.
It’s difficult, right?
Well, when they came in, they were given a sheet in the book,
with the pictograms;
Now let’s repeat the exercise,
but this time, pass the sheet to the one next to you.
It’s much easier, right?
I invite you to the next time you are well
say it, enjoy it
and above all, value it.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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